The Bibliothèque du tourisme et des voyages - Germaine Tillion is offering you a trip without a plane ticket, right at the heart of the Brazil-France 2025 Season... The library invites you to discover the Regards sur la villeexhibition, by Paulo Mariotti, from May 6 to July 12, 2025. Upon entering, visitors are plunged into a freehand-drawn São Paulo, where each pen or felt-tip mark reveals a discreet part of Brazil's urban soul. Theexhibition invites visitors to rediscover Brazil's economic capital, not in its tumultuous state, but through a series of selected fragments that reveal its architectural heritage.
Mariotti, who had already devoted a book to Rio de Janeiro in 2013, this time turns his attention to the city where he grew up, but which he had never depicted before. And for this first look at São Paulo, he chooses frontality, isolation and precision. These are not animated scenes, but buildings extracted from their context, highlighted like silent sculptures, captured in their graphic solitude.
The artist justifies this choice by the visual complexity of São Paulo: an urban density that pushes us to seek clarity in detail, emotion in structure. As he puts it, " zooming in" becomes a way of creating intimacy between the viewer and the city.
The sinuous lines of Brazilian modernist architecture, the vibrant facades of Art Deco and the powerful volumes of the early 20th century are all on display. Some works celebrate the signatures of giants such as Oscar Niemeyer, Rino Levi and João Artacho Jurado. Others pay homage to more anonymous buildings, just as evocative of a plural, contrasting city, sometimes brutal, often poetic.
The buildings are treated like portraits, with an intimacy that contrasts with the immensity of the megalopolis. This change of scale allows visitors to reclaim the city visually, and appreciate its formal richness without being drowned in the urban mass.
This exhibition is aimed at those curious aboutarchitecture and urban culture, but also at anyone who wants to discover São Paulo from an aesthetic and personal angle, far removed from tourist clichés. As a family, with friends or for a solo outing, you are invited to take your time wandering between the works, stopping to consider a line, a perspective, a motif.
The atmosphere is conducive to contemplation, almost graphic meditation. You come here to soak up shapes and textures, to feel the city without actually being there, as if you were opening the pages of an intimate notebook.
If you've always wanted to explore São Paulo in a different way, let Paulo Mariotti 's precise, intimate style be your guide: each drawing is an invitation to look at the city not as a postcard, but as a territory of architectural emotions. And a very happy France-Brazil 2025 Season to you all!
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Dates and Opening Time
From May 6, 2025 to July 12, 2025
Location
Germaine Tillion Library
6 Rue du Commandant Schloesing
75116 Paris 16
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Accessibility info
Access
Metro line 9 "Iéna" station
Prices
Free
More information
Open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 1pm to 7pm, Wednesdays from 10am to 7pm, and Saturdays from 10am to 6pm.
